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theodp (442580) writes "Gigaom reports that while speaking at the Bloomberg Energy Summit on Wednesday, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he gives 'a lot of money to the Sierra Club' to help close dirty coal plants, but added that as a society we have to 'have some compassion to do it gently.' Subsidies to help displaced workers are one option, said Bloomberg, while retraining is another option. But, in a slight to the tech industry's sometimes out-of-touch nature with workers outside of Silicon Valley, he said retraining needs to be realistic, 'You're not going to teach a coal miner to code,' argued Bloomberg. 'Mark Zuckerberg says you teach them to code and everything will be great. I don't know how to break it to you... but no.'"

The real issue is that some kinds of people would never be having this sort of pedantic discussion in the first place. They're not stupid enough to get bogged down in the subtle distinctions (from their point of view; to us it's plain as day) that allow us to do our jobs.

Next time you have an argument with your girlfriend, I dare you to try to distinguish between "I didn't say that," and "I said something different than that." When you're crying over losing your girlfriend, you'll see that in many contexts, strict logic is a liability and makes you a less articulate speaker. Yet without this bullshit, you can't be a competent coder. It is truly a fucked up world and it really does require all types. The Vulcans would go extinct. It's pretty amazing that coders and miners are able to so well maintain the preposterous illusion that they're parts of the same society.